


Light a Candle

by Sorrel



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Family Feels, Danger Twins Powers Activate, Emily and Daud have style but Corvo and Billie are EFFICIENT, Gen, Guilt and Regret, Royal Spymaster Corvo Attano, Tired Corvo Attano, i love that that's a tag, post-DH2, post-The Peeress and the Price, self-care is taking the good bits and leaving the rest for the rats, yes this does involve some Return of Daud canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:02:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23190580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.Two months into her search for the closest thing she has to family, Billie finds assistance from a most unexpected quarter.  The Royal Protector has business of his own with Daud, and he's willing to work with Jessamine's killer in order to see it settled.  Two formerly-sorcerous assassins, a dozen of the best fighters Karnaca's underground can offer, and one target: the Knife of Dunwall, the man who changed both their lives forever.One thing's for sure: it's going to be a night to remember.
Relationships: Corvo Attano & Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster, Daud & Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster
Comments: 43
Kudos: 76





	1. Chapter 1

There was someone on her ship.

Billie paused with one foot still on the dock, her gaze fixed on the open hatch to the lower deck. She knew for a fact that it had been closed when she'd left for the market this morning. She'd latched it herself, and secured it with the strongest padlock she owned, the key to which - she quickly checked - was suspended on a chain around her neck. In the three hours it had taken her to get to the market, pick up her mail, buy a couple days' worth of food, and catch a ride back to the docks, someone had found her ship, broken in, and - judging from the steam rising from the galley vent - made themselves very much at home.

It wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility that it was just a simple squatter. It wasn't _probable,_ this far out, but stranger things had happened. Most likely, though, it was someone from the bad old days who'd caught wind of her presence and tailed her back here for a more private conversation. Question was, friend or foe? She'd been poking into a lot of bloodfly nests lately; no telling what she might have stirred up.

She pulled her pistol from her belt and advanced down the hatch on silent feet. The lower deck smelled like hot oil and Serkonan spices, and she could hear the burble of simmering water and the hiss of a frying pan. What she _couldn't_ hear was the person cooking it, which ruled out her first, foolish thought that it might have somehow been Anton. Of course it wasn't, he was in Tyvia enjoying a well-earned second attempt at retirement, but for a moment there she still…

But no. The good doctor could cook with the best of them, but he had an infuriating habit of talking to himself while he worked - or worse, _humming_. Whoever was in her galley was almost entirely silent even to her trained ears, which narrowed down their identity to a very small selection of individuals, only two of whom she knew were in Karnaca. Thomas, who'd made his opinions clear in his letter, and-

Well, it wasn't Daud, not unless he'd grown half a head since she saw him last. The Knife of her memories was a scrapper, all barrel chest and bulldog tenacity; this man had the lean grace and powerful shoulders of a wolfhound. He did have that same indefinable… something that Daud had, though. That sense of latent movement, of potentiality, that her old mentor had been able to pull on like a well-fitted coat. Even standing in her kitchen, calmly chopping peppers at her stove, he made Billie's fingers itch for a blade.

Thankfully, she had other options. Billie leveled the pistol at the back of the intruder's head and cocked it with a _click_ that echoed through the little room. "Trespassing," she said, mildly surprised at how steady her voice came out, "is illegal."

The man didn't move. "So's murder, Captain Foster. Or do you prefer Lurk?"

Well, there went her hope that this was all just a big unfortunate coincidence. "Either's fine. Who are you and why are you on my ship?"

The intruder set down his knife - _her_ knife, damn it, she recognized the ding on the handle - and wiped his hands on a crumpled dish towel before turning. "I thought it was time we had a conversation."

Billie would have liked to make a witty reply to that bit of cliche, but she couldn't say much of anything at all, struck dumb by the face of a man she'd seen only once before, floating in the grip of her magic and still fighting back with everything he had. He was older now, grayer, the right side of his face distorted by a half-healed contusion and a truly staggering rainbow of bruises, but it would take a lot more than that for her not to recognize Corvo fucking Attano.

"Lord Protector," she said carefully. Of all of the possible outcomes of her work here in Karnaca, she hadn't thought to worry about this. She'd known that Emily would object if she caught wind of what Billie was doing here, but she'd never thought the empress might send her _father_ to make her objections known. "This... is a surprise."

"Is it?" This was apparently rhetorical, because Attano didn't give her a chance to reply before he nodded to the bag in her hand. "Did you pick up more onions?"

He would have made a good interrogator, she thought. Between the pleasant rasp of his voice and the whiplash jump of a subject change, she was about as off-balance as she'd been since the moment her imperial majesty had hauled herself dripping onto the deck. "I… did," she said cautiously. "Why?"

"You can't make locrio without onions." He held out a hand, curled his fingers impatiently when she didn't respond quickly enough to suit. "Well?"

Billie did a couple of extremely rapid calculations. To reach into the bag she'd have to shift the pistol into her other hand, and she wasn't foolish enough to lower her weapon, not with Attano so close and that knife still in easy reach. On the other hand, ignoring his request seemed like a bad idea, too. She compromised by handing over the entire damn shopping bag and stepping hastily back out of range, keeping the pistol trained on center mass. Attano inclined his head with something that might have been amusement and fished out a fat white onion before setting the bag aside on the counter and picking up the knife.

Billie's hand tightened on the pistol.

"The trick to peeling an onion," Attano said conversationally, inserting the very tip of the blade gently near the root, "is to slice straight through the tough outer layers. Once you've cut yourself a guideline, you can cut off the head - like so - and the rest just peels away, leaving the tender inner flesh." He held up the onion, peeled and shining. "See? Ready for the chopping block."

"I won't help you kill Daud," Billie said, with a calm she very much didn't feel. Attano had about five inches and sixty pounds on her at a conservative estimate, and while a pistol was usually pretty good insurance against even a very fast man with a very sharp knife, she wasn't sure it'd be enough tos top Corvo fucking Attano. "If that's what Emily wants from me, you might as well just kill me now and call it done."

"I'm not here for Emily." Attano set the onion down on the block and turned back to face her square-on. Still holding the knife, she couldn't help but notice, in an easy backhand grip Billie knew intimately. "And if I wanted Daud dead, I would have done it fifteen years ago when I had my sword to his throat."

"Bullshit," Billie said, but it came out a lot less certain than she'd like. She'd caught wind of rumors that that Attano had been seen in the Flooded District, and it was certainly true that _something_ had gotten Daud to finally get the fuck out of Dunwall. But if Attano had spared him back then- "You had wanted posters all over the Isles. Why bother if you already let him go?"

Attano shrugged. "Would you have wanted to explain to a twelve-year-old that you let her mother's killer walk free?"

Yes, a very good interrogator, Billie thought distantly. And probably an even better assassin. He'd slipped that blade between her ribs as smoothly as any killer she'd ever known. "If you don't want Daud, then why are you here?"

"I didn't say that." At her look, he smiled, a white flash of teeth against bronze skin that pulled grotesquely at the contusion on his cheek. "I said I didn't want him _dead._ "

Billie digested that in silence. "So you want me to help you find him? For what, exactly?"

"I have a proposition for him." Attano picked up the dish towel and wiped the knife clean, his motions fastidious and precise. "If he doesn't like the terms, he's free to say no. Does that satisfy you, Captain?"

It was probably about as good an offer as she could expect from a man like Attano. If all he wanted was information, there were easier ways to go about it; if he wanted her dead, he sure as shit wouldn't have needed to come all this way to do it himself. He was the Royal Spymaster, after all, with the kind of power she could dream about. If he was here - in Karnaca, in her kitchen - bruised and tired and unarmed except for the knife from her drawer, then it wasn't for anything so simple as revenge.

"Good enough for me," she said, and holstered the pistol. "Need a hand with dinner?"

###### 

Between the two of them they made short work of the meal, moving around each other in the cramped confines of the galley with surprising ease. Billie wasn't surprised he knew how to cook - though she would have been, before Emily. Not _that_ was a surprise she hadn't seen coming, when they'd made landfall at the mouth of the canal for supplies and the pretty young empress had up and disappeared into the market without so much as a by-your-leave, ambling back a couple hours later with a full coin purse and a sack of groceries. They hadn't been talking much then, five days into their journey and too many secrets still between them, but when Billie'd come up from the engine room and found dinner on the table she hadn't been able to bite back the obvious question. _My father taught me,_ Emily had said; after the interregnum there was a while where he hadn't let her eat _anything_ they hadn't prepared themselves, and with everything else so busy it'd been the only time of day she really had him to herself. _And picking pockets?_ Billie had asked, rather than let herself think of a lost little girl teaching herself drudge work just to eke out a few moments of peace with the only family she had left, and Emily had laughed for the first time since they'd left Dunwall and said _no, that one was for fun._

So no, Billie wasn't surprised the Lord Protector knew how to cook. Maybe a little surprised he could cook _well_ \- her highness had taken a couple weeks to get the hang of the tricky hob in the galley - but she sure as shit wasn't going to complain, either. Even with everything, it was a pretty nice evening: they carried everything up to the deck and ate in silence, watching the sun set over the waves.

After, Billie cleared the table and set the dishes to soak while Attano disappeared somewhere belowdecks and returned with a roll of parchment as long as her arm. She helped him unfurl the map and pin down the corners against the playful tug of the ocean breeze, studying it as she went. It was a map of Karnaca, almost identical to the one pinned on the board downstairs except the notes scrawled in the margins were in a cramped tradesman's hand rather than Emily's copperplate-perfect penmanship.

"You did good work, tracking him this far," Attano told her, when they were done. "Especially considering how much he's been moving. But your intel has a couple of gaps I might be able to fill."

Billie wanted to protest, but her own mission board was in plain sight downstairs, and while she hadn't had the chance to check, it was a pretty good bet that Attano had searched her room, too. It's what she would have done in his shoes. If he said she had gaps, she couldn't really argue.

"Daud is on the trail of an artifact known as the Twin-Bladed Knife. What it is, or for that matter what he wants with it, no one's been able to figure out. But he's been after it for more than two years now, and three months ago he tracked it back here to Karnaca." He tapped a thick-calloused finger against the Campo Seta dockyards. "According to the agent onsite, he arrived on the twenty-second of Harvest, on a whaling ship called the _Bear of Tamarack_."

Billie stared down at the map. 22 Harvest, that would have been… Void, she'd still _been here._ She thought she even knew the ship he was talking about, a big rusted-out hulk that had docked a couple miles down the coast. She hadn't been around when it arrived, busy playing peekaboo with the Grand Guard up in Batista, but she remembered it being there when she got back because Anton was complaining about the shoddy repair job. That had been Daud's ship. He'd been _right there,_ and she hadn't even known.

"My people lost track of him for a day or two," Attano continued, either not noticing or more likely not caring about her inner turmoil, "but he resurfaced in Cyria Gardens, meeting with a Grand Guard office at the Royal Conservatory. Her name is Sierra Esquivel, and she's the daughter of-"

"Leon Esquivel," Billie finished, shaking off her disorientation. It didn't help to get angry now, not when she was finally getting the intel she needed. She'd have a smoke and a curse later, once the Lord Protector was off her bloody ship. "Yeah, I remember. Daud got her and her mother out of Dunwall after Leon bit it during a little territorial dispute with the Bottle Street boys. She ended up in Karnaca?"

"Who hasn't," Attano muttered, but he moved before she could wonder if that had been meant as a joke. "Esquivel put him on the trail of a gang called the Eyeless, a medium-sized group that holds territory up here, in the northern side of the dockyards. But before he could pursue his lead, there was an… incident with a couple members of Delilah's coven."

"I thought Emily cut them all off when she broke Ashworth. What kind of _incident_ could they cause for someone like Daud?"

"A messy one, according to the reports I've read." He tipped his head in a shrug. "Not all magic flows from the Outsider, you know. There are older ways, if you're willing to shed blood for it."

Billie couldn't help but glance down at his bare left hand. She'd heard the same tales as everyone else, of course, and had always assumed he'd been Marked, like Daud. Had to have been, right, the things folk said he could do? It would have been just like the black-eyed bastard, too, throwing his favored children against each other just to see who came out on top. But maybe she was giving the Outsider too much credit; maybe Attano had carved out his uncanny advantage some other, darker way. It wasn't any of her business either way, and Billie was the last person to throw stones when it came to keeping company with witches, that was for fucking sure. But still. You had to wonder.

She cleared her throat and forced her mind back to the topic at hand. "How messy?"

"Daud killed at least three of them before he made his escape, with the assistance of a pair of… outside contractors we had onsite." A muscle tightened in his cheek, and though Billie didn't know him well enough to read his face, she had the feeling he was none too happy with the contractors in question. Because they helped Daud, instead of stopping him? Because they weren't supposed to interfere? "They took him to a safehouse in the Aventa District, paid a squad of twenty Morleyan mercenaries out of their advance, then took the rest and fled."

Ah, so that was it: he was angry they didn't do the job right. Billie tried to picture Daud's face if he'd ever caught one of the Whalers outsourcing a mark, and winced. "Careless of them."

"Especially since Daud disappeared after that." There was something dark in the Lord Protector's voice, and Billie imagined the contractors probably hadn't had much opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their cowardice. "However, we do know what he's after, and thanks to Officer Esquivel we know where he was heading next."

"The Eyeless," said Billie, who'd been wondering when they were going to go back to them. "But that was months ago. Surely he would have moved on by now?"

Attano didn't answer at first, just stared down at the map, heavy brows drawn together in a frown that pulled at the contusion on his forehead. There was a coin in his fingers, a heavy gold fiver, which he tumbled between his knuckles with the absent grace of a street magician. Billie wanted to grab those broad shoulders and _shake_ the answers out of him, but she knew it'd be worse than useless. She waited.

"They've got a new base," he said finally, after a long enough pause that Billie got a sudden insight as to Emily's surprising patience for Anton's stop-and-start rambles. "Off-books fight club in Albarca, opened a few months back. Places like that usually spawn and die like bloodflies, but this one's different. No holds barred, magic welcome. And they've got a champion no one can beat." Attano looked up at her, dark eyes unreadable behind the unruly fall of his hair. "An older man," he continued, deliberately. "Strong, fast, scar on the right side of his face, good with a blade. They call him the 'Black Magic Brute.'"

"Daud," Billie whispered. Attano nodded. "What in the name of the Void is he doing _there_?"

"That's the thing: I don't think it's by choice. My informant says they keep him locked up between fights, and they've got some kind of device that seems to keep him quiet."

"Like an Overseer's box," Billie realized. "If he can't use his Mark…"

"They might actually have a chance to hold him."

Horror welled in her, slick and cold. She _remembered_ what it had been like, under the weight of the ancient music: bright-hot and penetrating, pain that started nowhere and ended everywhere all at once. You couldn't move, couldn't think, could barely even _breathe_ with it running through you. The minutes Billie had spent under the suffocating pressure before Daud freed her felt like hours; she couldn't even imagine it going on and on and _on,_ across days, weeks, _months_ …

"We have to get him out of there."

She hadn't meant to say it out loud - didn't like revealing that kind of weakness to Attano, as if he couldn't have figured it on his own - but he was already nodding. "That's the idea. I scouted the area, and they have a lot of security, but it's mostly thugs and back-alley brawlers, no real fighters. They'll be on the lookout for Guardsmen and Overseers, not infiltration. We do this right, they won't even know we're there until it's too late."

"Hold on." Billie put up her hand, shaking her head. "'We?'"

Attano gave her a look like he was honestly doubting her intelligence. "If all I wanted was to tell you things you could have found on your own, Captain, I would have sent a fucking letter."

"...right." There was something sharp and trembling under her breastbone, and Billie didn't know if it was amusement or anger. Or hope. "Fair enough."

Attano tipped his head toward the map, a small impatient gesture: _and?_ Billie sighed, unfolded her arms, and shouldered in next to him.

"Alright, then. What's the plan?"

###### 

It wasn't a bad plan, as these things went. It certainly could have been worse. Before this summer, Billie had almost forgotten what it was like to put together this kind of operation, planning drop-off points and picking the approach. Planning jobs for Emily had put her back into the swing of things, but it had been a bittersweet pleasure, a reminder of all the secrets she'd still kept. This had been one of her primary duties, back when she was Daud's right hand, and she'd been _good_ at it. Maybe even better than she'd been at killing, and Billie Lurk had always been a very, very good killer.

And Emily, at least, had been willing to take constructive criticism more than once a fucking blue moon, which had put her one up on Daud. If she'd ever had reason to think about it Billie might have figured working with Attano to be more of the same, but the Lord Protector was, if anything, somehow _worse_ than the old Knife had ever been. There was obviously a brilliant tactical mind locked away behind that expressionless face, but prying so much as an ounce of collaboration out from behind his clenched teeth was like trying to thread a needle in a hurricane. Underwater. While wearing a blindfold.

"I still think we should have called in the Grand Guard," she told him later, her voice pitched to keep it from carrying to the street below. "What's the point of having an army if you won't use it?"

Attano grunted as he eased the unconscious scout to the floor. "Because sending an army after Daud has always worked so well in the past."

Ah, yes, those Morleyan mercenaries. Or was he talking about the Abbey? He hadn't been around Billie's ill-fated insurrection - too busy taking Burrows and his ilk to pieces, one bite at a time - but she wouldn't put against him knowing, either. That was the problem with spies: they always had their sneaky little fingers in other people's secrets.

"Maybe third time's the charm."

"Maybe he slaughters them all and I have to explain to the Duke why he's paying out another dozen pensions." Attano moved up next to her at the window. "We don't need more swords. We need a familiar face, so the Knife doesn't stab first and ask questions later."

" _That's_ why you came to me?" Attano didn't answer, busy studying the streets beyond. Billie fought the urge to shake him. "I hope you have a backup plan, _Lord Protector._ The last time I saw Daud I sold him out. I doubt he's all that eager to see me."

"And yet, here you are."

Billie said nothing. It was hard enough admitting to herself why she'd started looking after all these years, how watching Emily's determination to get home to her father had set up an ache in her chest no amount of whiskey could dislodge. Anton's prodding she might have tolerated - assuming she'd been stupid enough to tell him her plans, which she very definitely had not - and Emily's questions were a scourge she deserved to bear, but damned if she'd peel herself open for a man who traded in secrets as other men did coin.

At her silence Attano made a noise that might have been amusement and returned his attention to the street. "Don't worry. I have it on good authority he'll be pleased to see you."

_What fucking authority?_ Billie glared uselessly at the side of his head, but damned if she'd give him the satisfaction of asking. "How's it looking?" she said, instead, and Attano jerked his chin toward the street in answer, inviting her to see for herself.

"Quiet. Either they don't pick up until later or it's an off night."

"Could be a good thing. Less bodies if this goes wrong."

"Could mean they're paying more attention to new faces, too."

Billie sucked air between her teeth, considering. He wasn't wrong. She didn't _like_ it, but he wasn't wrong. And her neck wouldn't be the only one on the block if their plan went sideways. She knew the Lord Protector wouldn't hesitate to shed blood if it came to that… but she also knew he'd rather avoid it if he could. Fifteen years ago, she would have thought it a weakness. Five years ago - before Anton, before Emily - she would have called it noble but stupid. Now she was just grateful for the silent expectation that she keep her blade sheathed. This job was calling up too many of her old instincts as it was.

"It's your op," she said finally. Made herself say. "Your call."

"I didn't come halfway across the damn world to let a few cut-rate brawlers turn me away at the door," Attano said, not looking away from the street. "We stick to the plan."

Billie let out a slow breath, feeling her shoulders come down from their defensive slouch. That was good, that was alright then. Everything in her had cried out against the idea of turning around now, not when she'd finally come so close, but she would have done it, if Attano had insisted on playing it safe. Luckily, he seemed to be about as patient as she was feeling. Or maybe it wasn't luck: his daughter wouldn't know caution if it bit her on her lily-white imperial hindquarters, after all, and she had to have picked that up from _somewhere_. Sure as shit hadn't gotten it from her mom.

_Ah, Daud. Do you remember her face? I do. Do you still thrash and mutter in your sleep, dreaming about imperial blood on your blade? Is that why you came back now, after all these years? Are you looking for a way to atone, or just looking for one last impossible job?_

There was only one way to find out.

"We stick to the plan," she agreed. "You know the rendezvous?"

"Yeah." Attano finally turned to look at her, his eyes nothing more than dark cuts of shadow under the edge of his hood. "Listen, if this goes south, don't be a hero. Get to the fallback point and wait for my signal. I'll be right outside."

Billie almost wanted to smile. Once a bodyguard, always a bodyguard, it seemed. Even when the only 'body' in his care had so many deaths on her hands she might as well have been a fucking graveyard.

"You'd better be," she told him, climbing past him into the windowsill. "Otherwise I'll be wasting a lot of time trying to get you in."

###### 

Billie would never admit it, but it was a little nerve-wracking, walking into the Baths with her face bare and her head held high. No one knew who she was; her name didn't mean anything to these people except another line on a wanted poster, and there were no shortage of those around here. She was as safe as she could be, considering where she was and what she was here to do. But she still had to take a moment, as she approached the big double doors, to steel her nerves for what she was about to do.

Then she tipped up her chin, threw open the doors with both hands, and sauntered inside.

The guard on duty wolf-whistled at her entrance. "Now that's the kind of new face I like to see," she called. "Sister, where have you _been_ all my life?"

The girl couldn't be more than sixteen, seventeen at the outside. Billie felt every single one of her thirty-nine years as she forced an answering toothy smile onto her face. "Here and there," she said, falling into the easy give-and-take of banter. "I tend to go where the money is. Word is that's here. That true, or am I wasting my time?"

The girl's gaze skipped down the length of her, taking in her sturdy leathers and the well-used sword at her hip. "Depends on if you actually know how to use that thing. Lee's always in the market for a pretty girl with a blade."

_Pretty girl._ Billie hadn't been a girl in a long, long time, and she'd never been what you'd commonly call 'pretty.' The best she could aim for was usually _interesting._ This kid sure wasn't shy about being interested.

"I've known my way around a blade or two in my day," Billie drawled. "Depends on the take. I've had enough of working for spit and dreams."

"Nah, we're not like those skint bastards up in the Grizzlers. Pay's fair." The guard lounged more aggressively on the settee, stretched her long legs out in front of her. "I could introduce you, you know. For a price."

Billie raised an eyebrow. "What kind of price?"

Gold flashed on her teeth in an ingratiating smile. "A kiss?"

The laugh that cracked out of her startled herself as much as the guard. "Kid, does that line _ever_ work for you?"

"I live in hope," the girl told her, totally unabashed, and jerked her head toward the door. "G'wan in. Not much going on tonight, but if you can talk as well as you walk you might get on the books as soon as tomorrow."

"I live in hope," Billie told her, amused, and headed in.

Once inside she started scanning her surroundings almost automatically: the exits, the choke points, the structural changes. Attano had somehow gotten his hands on a copy of the original floor plan - from where, Billie didn't know and hadn't been inclined to ask - but there was no telling what the Eyeless might have done to the place once they took it over. It hadn't exactly been designed with back-alley brawling in mind.

She noticed the cage almost immediately, of course, but limited herself to just a quick, assessing glance. According to Attano's intelligence the Eyeless didn't know who they had locked away, but that could change right quick if they looked too closely at her face and put two and two together with the man downstairs. Megan Foster had made a name for herself down in Karnaca, on both sides of the law; Billie Lurk had only even been known for one thing.

So she made the rounds, talked to people, introduced herself. Played the part of a mercenary, new in town and looking for work. She couldn't make herself invisible, not with this face - even in Serkonos she was a few shades darker than their usual fare - but she could make herself forgettable, which was the next best thing. Throw up a paper target of the kind of person someone expected and that's all they'd see when they looked at you. Billie knew how to play that kind of role to the hilt: after all, she'd done it for fifteen years.

Only after she'd worked the room for a while did Billie finally allow herself to drift closer to the cage, as if unwillingly fascinated. The man standing guard gave her a smile full of malicious amusement.

"Come to catch an eyeful of the Brute, is that it? Don't worry, everyone does it."

Maybe there had been a part of her - a small, childish part - that hadn't really believed it was him. There were a lot of men with scars on their face, a lot of men good with a knife - it didn't necessarily mean it was him. Didn't mean it was _Daud_ locked up in a box like some kind of wild animal: the Knife of Dunwall himself, larger than life and twice as dangerous and always, _always_ three steps ahead of the pack. She'd loved him and hated and admired him and reviled him, had wanted to beat him almost as badly as she wanted to _be_ him, but even with her knife in his back he'd still come out on top. She knew, logically, that under the smoke and mirrors and sorcery he was merely a very intelligent, very driven man, but somehow she still hadn't believed that anything could bring him to… this.

But the man below her, strapped to a chair and seemingly insensate under the press of a sound she felt more than heard… it couldn't be anyone else. He was older - much older, actually, skipped graying and went straight to white, the dramatic old bastard - and drained of the leashed violence that had always seemed to fill whatever room he'd been in, but it was still the same face she knew better than her own, even after all these years. It was _Daud._ He was here. She'd found him.

And he needed her help.

"-know he doesn't look like much," the guard was saying, when she managed to tune back in. "But he's faster than he looks. You should see him with a knife in his hand."

Billie only barely stopped the hysterical giggle that tried to hiccup out of her throat. The first time she'd seen Daud, he'd jumped off a roof, killed two people before he hit the ground, and taken out the third while they'd still been drawing breath to scream. "That old geezer?" she said, after a moment to get herself under control. "You're kidding me."

"I'm telling you, girlie, it don't pay to underestimate him. Take a look at the scoreboard yonder. 'Round here the drains run red from folk like you who think he's an easy mark because he's got a little white in his mane." 

You could've drowned a fucking whale in the blood they'd spilled together - but he'd _stopped,_ at the end. Hadn't even been able to put a blade through the likes of Bundry fucking Rothwild. Hadn't even been able to hurt _her,_ not after all the shit she did: the bodies of her brothers and sisters stacked like cordwood, that lost look on Daud's face like she'd somehow managed to shatter some last bit of innocence he hadn't known he had left. Even then, he hadn't so much as lifted a hand to her. Something had broken in him when they killed that empress. He'd been done. Just going through the motions, dreaming of a way out.

And these fucking animals had him killing for _sport_.

"I hear he's got some kind of sorcery," Billie said, coloring her voice with calculated skepticism. "Not charms or tinctures, I mean, the real stuff. _Actual_ magic. I figured that was bullshit, but…"

"Nah, you heard right. They don't call him the Black Magic Brute for nothin'. Man's a fuckin' beast in the ring, I'm telling you. You come back tomorrow, you'll see a _proper_ fight."

_Beast_ , they called him, while they strutted and crowed around his cage like proud little peacocks. Oh, but if it was a beast they were wanting, a beast she would happily show them. She would teach these fools a lesson they would not soon forget.

"I'd like that," she said, and bared her teeth in a smile. "It's been a long time since I've had a proper fight."


	2. Chapter 2

Earlier, when she and Attano had been pouring over the pilfered building plans and strategizing over access points, they'd determined that the most likely option was a second-story window on the southern side of the building, overlooking an alley easily accessible from the canal side of the street. Getting to it from the outside would be fucking child's play for a man like Attano, but with no way of knowing what she'd find on the other side Billie had been considerably less confident about her ability to clear the room. They'd put together a couple of fallback plans - well, _she'd_ put them together, while Attano had stood there like a particularly irritating statue and occasionally offered gruff critique - but the window had still been their best bet by far. As she made her way up through the locker room and out onto the adjoining pipes, Billie crossed her fingers that she wouldn't have to find her way through a friggin' barracks or something equally irritating.

She shouldn't have worried. The room adjacent to the window was a makeshift bar of sorts, currently empty of anyone but a single bartender who was too busy bottling some kind of truly heinous spirits to notice Billie creeping up behind him. She choked him out with silent efficiency and eased his body to the ground behind the counter where it wouldn't be visible from the hall, then hurried to the window and whistled softly.

Attano's answering hum of acknowledgement came from right under her feet, and a moment later a shadow detached itself from the pool of darkness beside the dumpster. Billie held up three fingers, waited for his answering nod, and then on _one_ leaned as far down as she could to catch his outstretched hand at the apex of his leap.

He was heavier than she expected, somehow. Maybe a part of her still remembered how light he'd seemed in the grip of her tether, how she'd held him above the pavilion with such contemptuous ease. Her magic - _Daud's_ magic - had been gone from her a lot longer than she'd had it in the first place, but the weight of the Lord Protector at the end of her arm still made her reach uselessly, reflexively, for a power that hadn't existed in nearly fifteen years.

Attano caught onto the windowsill with his free hand, then braced his feet against the wall, blessedly taking most of his weight. At his nod, Billie gratefully released his other hand so he could haul himself inside with a subvocal grunt of effort. Despite his size, his boots were nearly silent when they hit the floor.

"Report," he said, low-voiced.

A small, contrary part of her wanted to remind him that she wasn't one of his agents, and she didn't have to take orders from him or anyone else. A bigger part of her wanted to roll back her shoulders and fall into parade rest, and since that was the more useful response at the moment that's the one she listened to. "Ground floor has one guard on the foyer, four on the floor. Three civilians, a bookie, two fighters. Haven't been able to get a head count up here."

"Daud?"

"I found him." She had to grind her teeth against the brief, useless surge of rage. _Master it. Channel it._ "It's like you said, they've got him locked up, under some kind of… suppression device. Not like a music box exactly, but… close enough. He's completely out of it."

A muscle flexed in Attano's jaw. She doubted he had much sympathy for Daud personally, so he must have spent some time under a box himself. What _was_ he? He didn't have any of the usual symptoms of witchcraft, no strange tattoos or reeking potions or smell of blood, and witches didn't usually last this long without devolving. He was smart, he was silent, and if the rumors were true he could fight like the very Void itself, but if he had any sorcerous talents he hadn't shown them to her.

"Power source?"

"Couldn't find it," she was forced to admit. She _had_ looked, as best she could without attracting attention. "I think it might be in the basement, and they've got it locked pretty tight. But the control switch is right out on the main floor. Locked, of course. Supposedly the club owner, Jeanette Lee, has the only key. Her office is at the end of the hall."

Attano grunted again, this time in acknowledgement. His gaze was fixed on nothing in particular, a faraway look to his eyes that said he was running the numbers. "Options?"

"We could draw her out. Make enough noise downstairs and she'll come running to see what the fuss is - but so will half the street unless we contain it. Or we could play up the business angle, try to register for the fights. I'm probably not enough to get her interest, but a double act might be, especially if you wear that mask you've got in your pocket."

Most men would have reached for it in reflexive confirmation; Billie had used that trick countless times to spook a mark into showing his hand. Attano merely frowned at her. "Or?"

"Or, we go to her." She jerked her head back towards the bar. "I'm not sure how many guards she has up here, but it's gotta be less than downstairs, and the back hallway is pretty much clear. We could go in that way, do a sweep and clear, hit her where she's comfortable with the crowd downstairs none the wiser."

Attano made an ambivalent noise in the back of his throat. "Assuming they don't see us coming."

Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline, the razor-wire high of making and executing a plan with the thinnest of margins, but Billie found herself grinning up at him. "I don't know about you, Lord Protector, but I wasn't planning on getting caught."

It could have been a trick of the light. But for a moment there, Billie could almost swear she saw a smile tucked away under that shadowy hood.

"Then I guess we'd better not get caught," he said mildly, and jerked his head toward the door. "After you."

###### 

Billie'd had easier infiltrations, probably, but damned if she could remember when. There was one guard on patrol, _one,_ a scrawny-looking woman with occult markings on her arms that didn't even get a chance to draw breath before she went down with Attano's boots between her shoulder blades. Billie scouted ahead while he took care of moving the body, just in case she had any friends on the way, but there was nothing. Just an empty hallway leading to two rooms at the end: Lee's office, with her and one other guard and a pack of hounds, and some kind of workshop. The latter was empty of everything except a dead Overseer hanging from a hook mine on the ceiling and - Outsider's _eyes_ \- a couple bottles of chloroform sitting out on the table, right there in plain sight.

Billie uncorked one, holding it well away from her face, and carefully wafted the fumes to confirm the contents matched the label. She coughed into her elbow, muffling the noise with her sleeve, and hastily recorked the bottle before nodding to Attano. It was the real deal.

She hadn't been imagining things earlier: that was definitely a smile. "Thoughtful of them," he murmured, his voice a low burr over the rumble of the boiler. "How's your arm, Captain?"

Billie looked down and right, the reflexive _I'm fine_ caught at the back of her throat. Of course she was fine. This wasn't one of her dreams, her hand discarded and twitching in the gutter and blood streaming down the side of her face. She was awake now, and all Attano wanted to know was if she couldn't be trusted to throw a fucking bottle in a straight line.

_Get it together, Lurk._

"Never got any complaints," she murmured back, and inclined her head toward the office door. "You want high or low?"

He studied her for a moment, measuring her height against his. "I'll take high," he decided. "You take the cage. Can always dart the guards, but if the dogs start barking-"

"Half the fucking bar'll be on us in a flash, yeah."

"Mhm. Could almost think you'd done this kind of thing before."

Billie's gaze snapped back to him. Was that a _joke_? But Attano wasn't even looking at her; he was already moving into position on the far side of the door, drawing a scarf up over his nose and mouth. Billie hastily followed suit, falling in on the other side of the door and loosening her knees in preparation. Attano put his hand on the knob, head tilted in silent question. She nodded. _Three, two-_

Attano slammed the door open and pivoted smoothly around the frame before Lee and her guard could react, arm already drawn back to throw. Billie heard and ignored the crash of breaking glass as she threw herself forward. The dogs were just starting to come to their feet, ears coming up in canine curiosity, as Billie skidded to a halt and threw the flask into the bars with all her strength.

The gas rose fast, reaching the white hound in the front just as it opened its mouth to bay an alarm. It choked, stumbling forward like a drunkard to paw at its muzzle. Billie allowed herself one long scan of the cage, making sure the rest of the pack was following suit, before she spun back to the human targets.

Lee was already staggering, bent over with her face buried in the crook of her arm, but the thug was still more or less upright, his sword out of his sheath and waving around in a vaguely threatening manner. Billie lifted her hand, squinting down the line of her wrist to aim, but Attano was already closing in. Didn't even bother to draw his own blade, just sidestepped with almost contemptuous ease and buried his fist in the man's substantial gut. The guard doubled over with a grunt.

Billie figured he had that one well in hand and decided to help Lee along instead, by the expedient application of boot to knee. The joint gave way with an audible _crunch_ , causing Lee to gasp in pain - and then to choke, exhaling into a ragged cough as the gas filled her lungs. Hah. Rookie mistake. Billie hooked her by the good ankle and tripped her over onto her face, pinning her with a knee to the spine and ignoring her increasingly weak struggles as she patted her down with brisk efficiency. Key, key, she had to have the key somewhere…

There, around her neck. Billie yanked it free, ignoring the way the chain bit into Lee's throat, and then liberated her belt pouch too, for good measure. Felt like a decent-size bone charm in there alongside the coin; could be worth a pretty penny in the right circles. She shoved it in her jacket and checked Lee's pulse with two fingers - out cold. Good.

Attano was shouldering the thug into the chair when she looked up, the man's throat reddened enough that Billie figured he had a little help making his way into dreamland. Attano cut her a look. "You got it?"

Billie held up the key.

"Good. Then let's get downstairs and get this done."

There were steps to her right, exiting off the office, but Billie didn't bother to point that out. There was almost certainly a guard on the other end who'd had something to say about a pair of strangers coming out of the boss's office, and they were trying _not_ to get into a brawl. Not until they got Daud out of that hole, anyway. She didn't fool herself that the locals were going to let them take their prize possession without a fight, but if they could get the suppressor shut down first, a whole lot of things would get a whole lot easier, real fast.

"There's a hole in the locker room ceiling," she told Attano. "It's how I got up here. If we stay quiet and work quick, we should be able to get the box open with no one the wiser."

"Except that guard." He was at the window now, studying the floor below. "He isn't going to let anyone near it."

"Not without a distraction."

Attano's eyebrows shot up. "You volunteering?"

She thought about that _girlie,_ the way he'd seemed eager to hold forth to the new kid on the block. She'd take a self-important blowhard over a lecher any day. "Sure." She glanced down at the floor, measuring. "I won't be able to hold him for long, though. Hope you've got fast hands to go with that quick blade, milord Protector."

Attano tipped one shoulder in a shrug, but under the edge of his hood, his dark eyes were glittering. "I do alright."

###### 

Back on the ground floor, Billie went out first, as agreed, wandering over to the guard and engaging him with some inane question about the rules. She barely even heard the words coming out of her mouth, much less his answers; all of her attention was fixed on the lean dark shadow that slipped out in her wake. Attano didn't have a pickpocket's knack of making himself unremarkable - too tall, too graceful, too damn dangerous to pass unnoticed - but he did alright, for a fighter. Made it around the boxing ring and across the floor without getting noticed, which was the main thing, and Billie did her best to keep the guard's attention off his post and onto her so Attano could do his work.

He was just sidling up to the panel when the beefy guy up in the boxing ring decided to take a breather against the near set of ropes. Attano froze, then pulled his hand back to his side, hiding the betraying glint of metal between his fingers. Above him, the boxer messily gulped water from a canteen, oblivious. Attano tipped his shoulder, turning his face into shadow, and peered down into the cage, like he'd just happened to see something that caught his interest.

Billie gritted her teeth. _C'mon, c'mon…_

The boxer's friend called a few lazy insults at his back; he half-turned to flick her off, but he looked like he was listening. Just a few a seconds more, and he'd toss aside the canteen, turn the rest of the way back, and-

Over the guard's shoulder, Billie watched Attano stiffen, then straighten, tension springing from his suddenly squared-up shoulders. It didn't read like anger, not exactly, but whatever it was made the hairs on Billie's neck stand straight up, like that time she'd crept into a supposedly empty room and found herself six inches away from the rich owner's pet jungle cat. It was the sensation of coming face-to-face with a predator when you least expected it - and Billie wasn't the only one who noticed.

"Hey!" said the boxer. "Who the fuck is _that_ guy?"

"Huh?" Billie's talkative friend turned, following the boxer's pointing finger, and scowled, starting over towards Attano. "The fuck you think you're-"

Maybe if he hadn't been so fixated on whatever it was about the cage that had grabbed his attention, Attano might still have managed to salvage the situation. But what Attano actually did was to grab the guard's hand before it could land on his shoulder, an empty look on his face that said he was moving on instinct, and twist it up behind the guard's back with an audible _pop_ of dislocation.

"What the fuck!" the boxer shouted, and Billie winced even as she reached for her own sword. She'd been on the wrong side of that move a dozen times sparring with her majesty, and she well remembered the wrench of it, the way it echoed up through your shoulder - and unlike Emily, Attano very definitely hadn't been going for a tournament hit.

Except no, that wasn't right. She couldn't have- How could she have known that? She'd never crossed swords with Emily, not with her arm-

-except that there was _nothing wrong with her arm for fuck's sake Lurk get it together-_

"Captain!" Attano shouted, and it was a pretty damn good thing there _wasn't_ anything wrong with her arm, actually, because she would've been dead if she hadn't gotten her blade out before the witch coming up on her right put her whalebone sword straight through her fucking eye. Billie blocked that strike, parried the next, and then let the witch close in for the third, locking their blades together at the hilt while they strained-

-and then dropped her left hand and shot six inches of hardened carbonized steel straight through the witch's thigh and into the tile below. The witch choked, a punched-out gasp of noise as her grip went loose, and Billie knocked her sword arm up and out of the way, spun her around the injured limb, and slit her throat. She let the body drop, saw that across from her Attano was doing the same with the guard, and their eyes met for one long and rueful moment before all fucking hell broke loose.

Billie had seen some damn fine swordsmen in her day. Not that everyone in the Whalers had been an expert by any means, but generally, you had to be pretty good with a blade to make your living by it. Billie herself had only ever been about middling-decent - she preferred the kind of fighting where your target didn't get a chance to fight back - but some of the others had been truly excellent. Daud, of course, but also Rulfio, and Master Killian, and even little Fisher, who hadn't looked like she could cross swords with a hagfish but moved like she had lightning in her joints. Until today, Billie would've said she'd seen just about the best the Empire had to offer.

Attano left them all in the dust.

Okay, sure, this was a boxing club, not a duelist's hangout - but these were still thugs and killers to a man, and Attano was taking them on two and three at a time, and keeping her safely at his back, to boot. A bodyguard to the last, he'd fallen automatically into a defensive stance in front of her, and he was fending them off with a ruthless grace and precision that made Billie feel like a clunky automaton in comparison. Void, if he was like this in his fifties, what must he have been like in his _prime_? If it wasn't for the circumstances Billie might even have enjoyed the chance to see a master at work.

It had to be said, though: the circumstances were pretty fucking bad. They were surrounded on three sides by armed and angry gangsters, and the only reason they hadn't been flanked was because they'd let themselves be cornered instead. It had seemed like the lesser of two evils at the time but it was starting to look like a poor tactical choice, especially since it was only a matter of time before someone decided to say 'fuck it' to collateral damage and come back with a grenade. Billie was really starting to wish she'd saved one of the chloroform bottles, or maybe a grenade or two of her own. Something big and splashy, something that could even the odds-

An idea lit her up like a strike of lightning. "Attano!" she shouted. " _Key_!"

He didn't even hesitate, just turned and pitched it at her in a deadly glittering arc. Billie dropped her sword, snatched it out of the air with her right hand, and grabbed Attano's pistol from his belt with her left, clearing a path with a tight pattern of shots. It wasn't much of an opening, but she didn't _need_ much, not with Attano at her back. She vaulted over a cursing body, felt her boot slip on the blood-slicked tile, and used her momentum to throw herself forward into a full-body slide rather than go down. She shot her last bullet into the knee of the thug trying to flank Attano, threw the empty pistol into the face of the next, and then twisted into a forward roll and came up running. The tide of the fight had taken them into the far corner, furthest from the door, but she'd come out on the other side of the crowd and it was only a few yards-

She skidded into the side of the control panel, almost overbalanced, and cursed as she righted herself. Fumbled the key out from between her fingers and jammed it at the lock - missed, corrected, clawed the grate open - ducked as a pistol barked behind her, heard a bullet ping off the column a few feet from her head - and then _slammed_ the switch down with one sweating palm.

The suppression field died with a heavy thrum that shivered the tile underneath her feet.

In the sudden silence that followed, someone's quiet "Oh, shit," was perfectly audible - as was the low shivery noise from down in the Pit, like air pulled backward through a vent. It had been more than fifteen years since she'd heard it last, but Billie knew the sound of Daud's magic right down to her bones.

The next few seconds were a blur. Billie heard shouts, cursing, and the thunder of running feet, which rapidly devolved into choked-off screams and the wet splatter of blood against tile. She glanced over to check that Attano was still with them, and found him panting but unharmed. He didn't look worried about becoming a casualty of Daud's vengeance. Because he'd obviously been fighting against Daud's captors, or because he wasn't worried about Daud, period? And if it was the latter, what the _fuck_ did he need with her?

When it was over, Daud reappeared in a flicker of ash and shadow, someone's stolen sword in his hand and his sleeves wet with blood. He glanced from her to Attano and back again, but if he was surprised to see _either_ of them, you couldn't tell it from his face.

"Lurk," he said, and no, there wasn't even a hint of surprise there, the bastard. Just a deep abiding satisfaction, like he'd won a private wager with himself. "You came."

"Yeah, well, I got bored." She sheathed her blade, noticing the trembling in her fingers only when they were no longer wrapped around the hilt. "You don't seem too surprised to see me."

"I knew-" He broke with a cough, doubling over, and Billie forgot every bit of caution she'd ever learned and dove forward to catch him under the elbow. He smiled down at her, vague and unfocused but still with that way of making you feel like you were the only two people in the room. "-knew you would," he finished on a rasp, and lifted a hand to her cheek. "Your eye. What happened? How'd you get it back?"

Billie felt a chill work its way down her spine. Daud's thumb was resting on the apex of her right cheekbone, in exactly the same spot she woke up clutching when she had one of _those_ dreams, the hot line of agony still fresh on her unmarked skin. How could he- How could he possibly _know_ -

"Back? What do you mean, get it _back_?" Even through her shock she became aware he was leaning more heavily against her and automatically shifted her stance, trying to shore him up. "C'mon, old man, what are you on about?"

His lips parted, as if to answer - but then his eyelids fluttered, and she felt his knees give out under him. She cursed and scrambled to take his weight, but he'd always been heavier than he looked, the useless old bastard, and it didn't seem like he'd lost any muscle in retirement. She experienced a moment of profound awareness about just how much it was going to hurt to hit the floor with him on top of her - and then Attano was there, taking his other arm with a grunt and slinging it over his shoulders.

Some old instinct made her want to herd Attano away from him, but she bit down on it savagely before it could reach fruition and twisted around to check Daud for injury instead. None of the blood on him seemed like his, but when she ran a hand down his back she came up with a very familiar-looking dart.

"Sedative," Attano said when she held it up for his inspection, and Billie rolled her eyes.

"Fucking well know _that._ But Daud's Mark made him immune."

Corvo shrugged as best he could under Daud's listing weight. "Maybe he lost it," he said. "Or maybe the music didn't quite wear off yet. Doesn't matter; we need to move."

And Billie _knew_ that, she really did, but she couldn't help her worried look at Daud, hanging from Attano's white-knuckled grip and murmuring something to himself she couldn't quite make out. Seeing him in the box, that was bad, but she knew how to _fix_ that. They got the key, got him out - that should have been enough. What if it wasn't? What if there was something wrong with him that she couldn't fix?

What if after all this time, she was just too fucking late?

Attano intercepted her look and shook it away, his eyes dark and serious. "I've got him," he said, shifting Daud's arm more firmly over his shoulders, "you take point," and it wasn't like she had any fucking better ideas, so Billie let out a soundless curse and turned on her heel, drawing her sword once more.

###### 

Attano shouldn't have worried: there was nothing left in the building but corpses. Say what you like about Daud, but the man always had been thorough. And it wasn't like she was going to be the one to deny him the right of revenge, considering what they put him through - but she felt a pang of sadness nonetheless, walking past the dead staring eyes of that stupid cocky kid guarding the door. It wasn't that she was sorry they were dead, particularly, it was just- such a fucking _waste,_ that was all. Everyone thought they knew what they were getting into when they took this life, but you couldn't predict something like Daud coming down on you.

That was the problem with the Outsider's Mark, when you got right down to it. It didn't even the odds, the way she used to think when she was young and angry and looking to get a little of her own back; it flipped the whole fucking table, tossed all the cards in the air. You couldn't prepare for something like that. And Daud - would he have killed them all anyway, no matter what, become the beast they'd reduced him to in one last orgy of violence? Or had he slit those throats because _she_ caused a situation he felt he needed to kill his way out of? Would things have gone different, if Billie had been just a little faster, a little smarter, a little fucking _better_ at the only thing she'd ever really been good at?

She'd never know, now. And neither would they.

The trip back to the station was accomplished with a surprising minimum of fuss, all things considered. Daud seemed to resurface enough to realize that an escape was in progress and to participate enough they didn't have to actually drag the heavy bastard, if not quite far enough to realize who, exactly, it was that was holding him up. Probably for the best. He hadn't seemed surprised to find Attano there with her in the Baths, but considering how he'd passed out about twenty seconds later, there was also the distinct possibility that he hadn't actually recognized the Lord Protector at all, not with fifteen years and a fresh rainbow of contusions between their last meeting. Billie wasn't looking forward to dealing with the fallout of _that_ revelation if he hadn't.

The carriage itself posed something more of a problem: Daud had been able to keep moving forward more or less under his own power, but climbing _up_ into the cart was clearly going to be a nonstarter. Billie eyed Daud's lolling head, then looked above it to Attano's rueful dark gaze and raised her eyebrows. Attano shrugged, as much as he could with fourteen stone of semiconscious assassin draped across his shoulders, and jerked his chin at the carriage door in answer.

Between the two of them, they managed to haul Daud up into the carriage and get him settled. Attano thumped into the seat opposite, twisting to look at his unburdened shoulder. Billie hip-checked Daud aside enough to wriggle in next to him and snorted at Attano's moue of distaste. "Whatever it is, I'm sure you've seen worse."

"No doubt," Attano said dryly, and turned just enough for her to see the sheen of fresh blood under the streetlamps.

Billie's heart slammed against her ribs. "Is that-"

"Relax, it's not his." Attano studied the bloody rent in his sleeve like it belonged to someone else. "Mhm. Not bad. They kept their blades sharp, I'll give them that."

Billie had to turn away against the sharp and sudden urge to grab him by the scruff of the neck and shake him like a disobedient pup. She slammed the control lever for the carriage, using the sudden jolt of motion to hide her face until she was sure she had it under control, and then turned back with an only mild glare. "You could have said something."

One dark brow rose. "We weren't long on time," he pointed out, and damned if the bastard didn't sound almost amused. "There were more important things at the time."

"Yeah, and how exactly do you think that would have worked out if you'd passed out from blood loss and I had to drag _both_ your irons out of the fire?"

This time his look was tinged with gentle contempt. "From a scratch like this? It's not even my sword arm."

Billie could see for herself that he wasn't wrong, exactly; it was a clean slice, and shallow, barely even bleeding anymore. But- "You're an _idiot,_ " she informed him, helplessly vexed and not entirely sure why, which made it worse. "You have to be more careful than that."

He studied her in silence, one brow quirked. His expression might have been written in High Tyvian, for how well Billie could read it.

After a moment, he said, "Emily said you were bossy."

Billie sucked in a breath between her teeth and looked away, something uncomfortable squirming low in her belly. It wasn't like she'd _forgotten,_ exactly. It was just that she'd been doing such a good job not thinking about Emily and then-

"Does she know?" she blurted, when she couldn't stand it anymore. "That you're here? Not just in Karnaca, I mean, but-"

"She knows." Attano's voice was barely audible over the clack of the carriage wheels, but it silenced her as effectively as a shout. "I'm done keeping secrets from her."

Attano could be a stone-cold son of a bitch, but Billie knew that the admonishment behind those words hadn't been aimed at her. Even with all of Delilah's witchcraft, Duke Luka's coup never would have worked without such an inattentive ruler on the throne - and if Emily had been inattentive, it was only because others had picked up slack enough to allow it. If Attano was half the man she thought he was, he had to know that. Billie wasn't to blame for Delilah's coup, except for all of the thousand and one ways she absolutely fucking was.

Billie looked away from Attano's steady dark gaze and let the silence unspool between them, unbroken and unchallenged. Daud. This was about Daud. Emily wasn't any of her business, not any longer.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time the carriage hit the end of the line Daud was completely out, the kind of unconscious that went past sleep and into something else. Billie did her best to bite down on her worry and focused on helping Attano haul him up and out of the carriage, throwing his other arm over her shoulder so they could drag him down to the dock together. It was awkward going, with Daud a little taller than her and Attano another head taller still, but they limped along anyway, and even managed to hand him up to the deck with a minimum of additional bruising. Billie dropped him gratefully in the nearby chair, giving thanks for her prescience in kicking it near the railing, while Attano hauled himself up the ladder behind her with a grunt of effort.

Billie watched him pause with one hand still on the railing, swaying like a drunkard with the rock of the boat, and wondered wearily what the fuck was wrong _now._ It had been a long night, sure, and Attano wasn't a young man, but that hadn't slowed him down much when he was taking on half a fucking gang earlier. And she didn't think he was hiding another injury.

Or no _fresh_ ones at least, she thought, eyeing the colorful collection of bruises on his face. Oh, that stupid, stubborn bastard. She'd bet every coin in her pockets that he had more of those to match under his clothes, and probably worse besides. And he'd gone on a _job_ like that? _Idiot!_ Him and his daughter both, two stubborn little peas in a pod. Billie could leave him as bait for the hagfish, she really could.

Well, there wasn't much she could do about it now, not with the night mostly done. The only thing left was to get Daud below decks - and _that_ was going to be challenge enough, given the lack of room to maneuver. The stairs would be narrow for two, much less two with fourteen stone of unconscious assassin slung between them.

Attano was going through the same calculations, she could see it in the resigned stillness in his face. Feeling vaguely guilty and defensive about it, she offered, "I could try and open up the cargo doors - or maybe I have something for a stretcher?" Fuck knew she had enough junk floating around down there, she could probably rustle up something that would hold him.

Attano only shook his head. "Too slow," he said, and then before she could argue he crouched down and hauled Daud's slack body up over his shoulder with a practiced heave.

"Fucksake, Attano," she sighed, and scrambled down the steps ahead of him, lifting the lantern high so he could see to place his feet. "Careful, that one's-"

"I got it," he grunted, navigating past the tricky third step with an ease that told her just how much he'd made himself at home earlier. "Just get the door."

She hadn't thought this far ahead, actually, hadn't considered the logistical reality of _having him on her ship,_ and therefore hadn't prepared a bunk for him before they set out. She paused for a second, doing some extremely fast calculations - Emily's bunk was right out, the doc's room was full of junk, fuck knows she didn't want him waking up and snooping around in her shit - and at Attano's impatient noise she mentally threw up her hands and led him to Anton's old room.

Attano dumped his burden onto the narrow bunk with all the grace of a sack of meal and straightened with a groan of relief. "Void, I'm getting old."

Or maybe he was still recovering from whatever left his face looking like the wrong end of a dockside brawl, Billie thought but didn't say. He wouldn't appreciate having his weakness pointed out. "If you'd given me a minute, I could have helped."

Attano shrugged, rolling the wounded shoulder with an absent grimace. "My way was faster."

"Uh-huh." She gave him a pointed once-over, lingering on his bloodied sleeve. "There's a med kit in the galley. Go patch yourself up, stop bleeding all over my deck."

It was only after the words were out of her mouth that Billie remembered that she wasn't talking to Anton, to be bossed around like a recalcitrant uncle. But Attano must not have taken it personally, because he only shrugged and withdrew, leaving her alone with Daud.

There was a limited amount she could do without stripping him down, but she managed to wrestle him out of his hooded jacket and undo the catches of the heavy Tyvian-style shirt he wore underneath. _Still with the red, old man,_ she thought - although she didn't have much room to tease on that front, did she? - and checked over his ribs with careful hands, rolling him over with some effort to examine his back. No blood and no broken bones, which was honestly better than she was expecting, given the circumstances.

Better than she'd feared, but still worse than she'd hoped: he'd been beaten to the void and back, and repeatedly, judging by the number and age of the bruises. His hands had gotten the worst of it, knuckles swollen and a couple of poorly-healed breaks in his fingers. Not a surprise, given what he'd been up to. More concerning was the dark grayish mark on his right hand, spreading up his wrist and onto his scarred forearm like an ink stain. It didn't look like a bruise, exactly, but it didn't look like anything else, either. Maybe it was the residue of some witch-tincture, something they'd put on him to keep him docile for the fights.

Or maybe he'd done it to himself, what the fuck did Billie know. Who could even guess what he'd been doing with himself for the past decade and change. Well- Attano, probably, but he hadn't volunteered and Billie hadn't been able to bring herself to ask. She didn't know a void-damned thing about Daud's life now, except that he'd obviously latched onto some new obsession to chase, if Attano's reports were any indication. And she didn't have the least idea what Daud could possibly find compelling enough about some magical weapon to come out of retirement, after all those years away.

It wasn't like him. A lot of killers tended to fall a bit in love with their weapons, but Daud had never been one of their ilk. He'd always taught her not to put her trust in _things,_ that tools were only as good as the hand that wielded them. And now here he was, chasing after some bit of shiny with the fervor of a religious man. It didn't make _sense._

Billie glared down at his unconscious body, wishing she could just shake the answers out of him. All these fucking years, and she didn't understand him any more than she ever had. He'd just crashed back into her life, as unshakably confident as ever, acting like he knew what she was going to do before she did it, like he had all the fucking _answers_ when all she wanted-

All she wanted-

Billie collapsed down to the edge of the bed, head in her hands. She closed her eyes and pressed the heels of hands hard against her eyes, trying to choke back the tears she could feel burning hot at the backs of her eyelids. Void. _Daud._

It was some minutes later when a deliberate scuff of footsteps drew her attention to where Attano stood in the doorway. She glared at him reflexively, but he only raised an eyebrow at her in return, pointedly shrugging his wounded shoulder. He'd cleaned up and changed while she was occupied, the vest and coat shed in favor of a loose undyed linen shirt favored by Serkonan dockworkers, thin enough that the edge of his bandage was just barely visible underneath.

He was also holding a bone charm, an enormous intricate pinwheel of bone and steel, as wide as his palm and shiny-white without the usual patina of age. Billie had only ever seen one other quite like it, suspended from Emily's belt when she'd scrambled dripping-wet onto the deck that first morning in Dunwall. When she'd caught Billie eyeing it askance she'd explained, bitter and defiant with a stubborn jut to her jaw, that it had been a gift from her father. Billie hadn't realized that meant he'd carved it _himself,_ but the one Attano carried now was unmistakably from the same hand.

It was also obviously meant for Daud, and Billie gnawed on her lip as Attano closed in, not sure if she should interfere. There were a lot of dark things you could do with a charm like that, if you had the knack. And Daud was vulnerable now.

Attano caught her hesitation and flashed her a quirk of a smile that almost reached his eyes. "It's for healing, Captain. I've used it myself."

"Not often enough, I bet," she said, more or less on reflex, but it wasn't like Attano would go to all this effort to kill Daud in his sleep, would he? She got out of the way and watched only somewhat suspiciously as Attano bent to fasten it to Daud's belt.

Daud did seem to relax a little once it was on him, some infinitesimal softening of the coiled tension that rode him even in sleep, so Attano probably hadn't been lying. He noticed her noticing and gave her a little quirk of an eyebrow, deliberately needling, and she rolled her eyes and elbowed him out of the way like he was Anton, making a nuisance of himself at her workbench. She took the spare blanket from the foot of the bed and tugged it loose, tucking it up around Daud's broad shoulders. Then, on some small, stupid impulse, she bent down and brushed a kiss against his forehead.

When she straightened, Attano was watching her, that fucking unreadable face giving her nothing as always. She felt a flush track hotly up the back of her neck.

Attano didn't say anything, though. In fact, he did a pretty good job looking like he hadn't noticed anything at all. And maybe it was that - that small amount of grace in a situation that was anything but - that made her give in to another Impulse, as foolish as the last. She reached up to grab the bottle of Samarran vodka Anton left on the shelf, held it up for Attano's inspection, and said, "Drink?"

If she'd put even a moment's thought into it, which she most definitely hadn't, Billie would have thought that Attano would scoff, or more likely give her that faintly scouring look, like she would have to be the stupidest person alive to make such an offer. But instead he just tilted his head, like he was actually considering it, and then said fervently, " _Void_ , yes."

###### 

By unspoken consent they repaired to the upper deck, Billie ducking into the galley on the way up to grab a couple of reasonably-clean glasses. She splashed a couple measures into each and Attano murmured his thanks as she handed one to him. Billie set the bottle down in the middle of the table and dropped into one of the chairs, watched Attano stretch himself into the other with a groan. It was a startlingly familiar motion, almost disorienting to see in his larger frame, and Billie felt a chuckle burble out of her throat completely against her will when Attano promptly slouched down in the seat and put his boots up on the table.

Attano shot her a vaguely sheepish look. Billie waved it away, not even bothering to fight down the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "No, no, it's just- Your daughter did the same damn thing."

Attano's face softened by increments into something that was very nearly a smile. Emily had his eyes, Billie realized. She hadn't noticed before, because Emily's were darker, almost-black to his whiskey-brown, but when he smiled they creased up in almost exactly the same way.

"Taught her some bad habits," Attano admitted, and for just a moment he looked entirely… _human,_ not the Royal Spymaster or Royal Protector but just a man, tired and rumpled and so much like his daughter that it was like a fist in her gut. Billie had always wondered, before, how Emily could have gone through all that- _pain_ , all that blood and betrayal, and still grown up so damn _sweet_. And now she had her answer sitting on her deck with his fucking boots on her fucking table.

Billie busied herself pouring another measure into her glass. "Taught her some good ones, too."

"Mhm. Maybe." It was hard to tell, with him, but she thought the expression that drifted across his stern face might have been melancholy. He shook his head and raised his glass to his mouth, hiding whatever it was before she could be sure. "Either way, starting to look like she doesn't have much left to learn."

"She's capable," Billie agreed. Even if Emily hadn't been kind, and thoughtful, and recklessly impatient and charmingly naive, even if she hadn't been all of those other things that seemed precision-crafted to burrow into Billie's heart like a fucking bloodfly, she still would've had Billie's respect, just for being so relentlessly _competent_ at all of the things empresses probably weren't supposed to be good at. Three guesses where she got _that_ from, and the first two didn't count. "But that doesn't mean she doesn't still need you."

Attano's gaze snapped to her face as if magnetized.

"Take it from someone who's been there," Billie told him. "Can't think of how many times I found myself in a tight spot over the years and found myself wishing I could ask the old man for advice just one more time."

Attano topped off his glass, not quite making eye contact.

"What I'm trying to say is thank you," she said, and Attano tipped his shoulder in a shrug. _Just_ like Emily, when it came down to it; sometimes absent-mindedly dictatorial but always shy of sincere thanks. Maybe when you had that much power people just expected you to share it, took it as their due, but that wasn't how Billie was raised. Ordinary human kindness wasn't ever something that should go unremarked, even if you were the Royal Spymaster - or the Empress, for that matter. And Attano had his own motives, to be sure, but he'd helped her get Daud out of that fucking cage, and that was a kindness no matter how you sliced it.

"I mean it," she told him. "I don't know that I could have done it without you."

He snorted and scrubbed a hand over his face, maybe the most unguarded gesture she'd seen him make. "Be honest, Captain. You probably could have done it better without me."

Billie winced. She'd almost forgotten about how the brawl got started, truth be told. Too distracted by Daud, and wasn't _that_ just the story of her voidforsaken life. But she was definitely remembering it now: that jungle-cat stillness as he forgot to pretend to be less dangerous than he actually was; that empty look in his eyes as he met a reaching hand with violence. "I mean, I wasn't gonna ask, but- Shit, Attano. What happened back there?"

It wasn't a surprise when Attano shook his head instead of answering. It _was_ a surprise when, after a moment, he said quietly, "Just memories."

Well. Maybe that wasn't much of a surprise either, when it came right down to it. She knew what it was like, when the wrong kind of memory took you cold, locked you in. Maybe it was a surprise that the legendary Corvo Attano had waking dreams like the rest of them, but- he was just a man, wasn't he? At the end of the day, he was just a very talented, very _determined_ man who'd gone to war to get his daughter back and hadn't been able to walk away. Billie knew better than most just how much you could lose even when you thought you were winning.

"Was it Daud?" she asked, unable to resist pushing now that he'd opened the door a crack. Attano shot her a contemptuous look - alright, fine, she got it, he wasn't afraid of Daud - and she amended, "Or the music box?" She'd thought at the time he must've landed under one himself at some point, but it hadn't occurred to her it might take him like that. It should've.

A small huff of air escaped his nose, and he shook his head and looked away, the scruffy line of his jaw sharp in the moonlight. "Nothing like that. Just, ah. Just the chair."

For a wonderful moment, Billie honestly didn't understand what he meant. And then realization came, like a flood of bilge water from a leaky pump. She'd never seen it herself, but she'd heard the stories. They'd _all_ heard the stories.

"You mean Coldridge."

He tipped a shoulder in rueful acknowledgement, still not looking at her. "It's been fifteen years, but…"

"Some things the body doesn't forget." She looked down at her right hand, the familiar nicks and calluses, then deliberately curled her fingers and looked away, taking a slug of her vodka. "Believe me, Attano, we've all got scars."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth Billie wanted to take them back. What a stupid, stupid thing to say to a man who'd earned most of his scars paying the price for a crime she'd helped commit. "Although I suppose you've got another one now, though," she added, trying to move past it, and nodded to his bandaged arm. "That going to be a problem for you back at the Tower?"

"Not anymore than the rest of me," he said, wryly gesturing toward the bruised side of his face. "Honestly, a thicker shirt and no one at court would even know it was there."

"Not quite," Billie muttered into her glass.

"What's that?"

Caught, Billie swallowed hastily and repeated, "Not quite no one." One dark eyebrow went up. "I mean, Emily would notice," she added reluctantly. "Will notice, I mean. She's going to have questions."

His heavy brows drew together in a frown. "I told you she knows why I'm here."

"Yeah, but. It's one thing to know a plan in abstract, and another-" She gestured vaguely with her half-full glass. "-to find out you got hurt protecting an enemy."

Attano cocked his head and looked at her like she'd said the first interesting thing all evening. "Are you talking about Daud, Captain?" His dark eyes were intent on hers. "Or yourself?" 

It was a palpable hit, as well-aimed as Anton at his irascible worst but loaded with considerably better ammunition. Billie knew she had a good poker face, she'd learned from the best, but at Attano's words she flinched like a rookie and both of them knew it for the answer it was.

"You're not her enemy," Attano told her, his quiet voice almost gentle. "I don't know if even Emily has figured out what she feels about you, but I know she wouldn't want you to get hurt on my watch."

"Kind of you to say, but you can't know that." 

"Sure I can." He sounded almost amused now. "She might've done a lot of growing up while I was… away, but I can still read that kid like a damn book."

"You weren't there," Billie said quietly. "Believe me, she made it very clear where I stood with her, and she wouldn't me at her back, much less yours."

"Mhm," Attano said. It was the kind of noise you made when someone had said something really stupid, but you were too polite to say so outright. "Maybe, maybe not. But I'll tell you one thing, Captain: if all you're going to do about it is mope, then I can think of a few more useful things for you to do with your time."

It took Billie a full three seconds to remember how to speak. "You're a fucking asshole," she finally managed.

Something shifted at the point of his cheek, a little tic of amusement that almost could have passed for a smile. "It's been said."

Yeah, she fucking bet. _Mope about it,_ void take him. She'd give him something to mope about, the sanctimonious pick. He could take his 'useful penance' and shove it up his ass sideways, that's what he could fucking do.

"Is that what you want with Daud?" she demanded, when she got tired of silently fuming. "For him to make himself _useful_ to the crown?"

"What I _want_ is for him to have kept his promise that I'd never have to hear his name again. Since he's already failed at that…" Attano turned his glass around in his hand, his gaze lost in the murky depths. "Let's just say I have some idea of the road he's on now. I know where it ends. And I'd like for him to stop before he hurts someone I care about."

The unspoken _again_ hovered heavily between them. He had to be talking about Emily, Billie thought with a surge of dread. She couldn't imagine Daud putting a blade to her highness, not now, not after everything - but that didn't mean he wouldn't hurt her anyway. She knew better than most that not all damage was intentional. And if tonight had given her a taste of how far Attano would go to protect someone he had every reason to hate, what would he do if he genuinely thought Daud was a threat?

Well, she could at least comfort herself that if Corvo fucking Attano truly thought the Knife of Dunwall was a threat to his daughter, he wouldn't be sitting here, drinking shit vodka while Daud slumbered safely downstairs. He'd have gone to the Baths, put a bullet through Daud's brain, and gone home with none the wiser. Him being here at all, much less half-drunk and bandaged from where he got cut protecting his lover's murderer, must mean he thought there was a chance. And Billie was grateful for that, of course she was; it was better than Daud deserved, especially from Attano. But-

_I have a proposition for him,_ he'd said, earlier in her kitchen. _If he doesn't like the terms, he's free to say no._ Looking at Attano's big, sword-calloused hands cradled around the glass, Billie knew that wasn't the same thing as _free to go._

"He can be… stubborn," Billie said, wincing at her own understatement. Void, she hoped Daud wasn't going to be stubborn. If she had to choose between saving Daud, the closest thing to an actual father she'd ever had, and protecting Emily, who was kind to the bone and said _I can't forgive you_ like it was the worst thing she knew how to offer, who might be the Empire's only real chance of positive change… well, it would be a bitter irony, to be sure, but she couldn't deny that Emily deserved whatever penance she could offer. Attano wasn't wrong about that. "I hope he's in a listening mood."

From the way Attano raised his glass in ironic salute, she had no doubt he heard the unspoken part just fine. "Believe me, Captain. That makes two of us."

###### 

It was late. Billie wasn't sure how late, given her distinct lack of watch, but it was late enough that the city bells had stopped ringing a while back and the bottle was more than halfway down. The lamp had burned down to nothing almost an hour ago, and the conversation had burned out with it, leaving them with just the moonlight and the crash of the waves against the pier. She'd spent a lot of nights out here, just like this, alone with her thoughts and the ocean. Spent a fair few more with Anton rattling around the deck holding forth about something or other, or with Emily sprawled on the other side of the table, repairing her gear or writing letters she knew she couldn't send.

But she'd been on her own for a long time before either of them came along, and she knew how to keep herself company. She knew how to be alone with her thoughts. And when her instincts were nagging at her something was off, she knew how to sit still and let it come to her.

"Hey, Attano. Got a question for you."

"Mhm?" Even so relaxed he looked like he'd poured himself into his chair, Attano's eyes were still sharp when he looked over at her. "What is it?"

"That bone charm you put on Daud. What does it do really?"

On the other side of the table, Attano went very still.

"It's just that it's been bugging me," she said, almost apologetically. "I've been around a fair bit of witch work in my day, and I've never seen one that just heals you, not without something else going on. Void magic doesn't _help,_ not like that. Not with soft things."

Attano didn't say anything, just kept watching her with those dark eyes that saw too much.

"But I don't think you'd go to all this effort just to hurt him, either." That had been the hardest thing to convince herself, once she'd realized what was wrong. That she hadn't misread Attano so far as all that. That no one who'd raised someone as fundamentally kind as Emily could have that kind of cruelty in him, no matter what he liked people to think. "So I just want to know, what is it really?"

Attano studied her for a moment longer, and she didn't for the life of her know what he was looking for, but whatever it was he must have found it because after a moment he sighed and said, "It blocks his connection to the Void."

Like the music box, or similar at least. Daud had relaxed when it was on, not a pain response, so it must not have the grinding misery of being under the box, but it would keep him from using his powers. Kept him vulnerable - or kept him safe, depending on your point of view.

"And not because I'm worried about what he might do," Attano said, demonstrating that his uncanny ability to follow her train of thought hadn't worsened for the drink. "It is keeping him alive. I was honest enough about that."

Honest enough, Billie suspected, was about as good as you got with Attano. But- "How in the Void is blocking his magic supposed to _help_?"

Attano turned his glass in his hands, seemingly lost in thought. Billie made herself wait; if she'd learned anything about Attano, it was that he'd only talk on his own damn schedule and no one else's.

"This artifact he's chasing," Attano started up again after a moment, rewarding her patience. "The Twin-Bladed Knife. It's not meant to be used by mortal hand."

Daud never had met a limit he didn't try to break, the stubborn old bastard. "He used it, didn't he?"

"Cut his way through twenty mercenaries." She might have been imagining it, but she thought she heard a shade of admiration in Attano's voice. "But it has a cost. It's presumably how the Eyeless got the jump on him in the first place."

And why the sedative had worked on him even after the music was off. Stupid, _stupid._ She should have seen it. She'd known _something_ was wrong, obviously, but she hadn't guessed this.

"So it's… making him sick?" It was almost impossible to imagine. The Mark made him stronger than other mortals, heartier; she'd seen him go for days in pouring rain without so much as a sniffle. "Weakening him somehow?"

Attano regarded her for a moment with an oddly gentle expression that she didn't entirely understand until he said, "It's killing him, Captain."

The inside of her head was filled with the roar of the sea.

"-draining him by inches," Attano was saying, when the wave receded. "He probably wouldn't have lasted this long if the Eyeless hadn't kept him under the suppression device."

Because it blocked his access to the Void. No Void, no powers - but also no drain. She scrabbled at hope: "But your charm works the same way?"

"More or less. I carved it years ago so I could stop dreaming of the Void." Any other time she'd be captured by the sideways confirmation of his own uncanny gifts, but now the entirety of her attention was caught on his face, the drink-softened grave intensity of him. "But you have to understand - at the end of the day, it's still just a charm. I don't know how this artifact works exactly, but I doubt anything made by mortal hands could do more than slow it down."

Billie wanted- Oh, she wanted any number of things, but mostly she wanted to believe that it was a lie. Some stupid story just strange enough to circle back around to plausible, cooked up to keep her from storming downstairs and yanking that fucking thing off of him. But all she had to do was think about his hand, his fucking sword hand with that dark stain spreading across his skin like ink, and she knew it wasn't.

"Can I save him."

"Honestly, Captain?" Attano met her eyes. "I have no idea."

She only managed to hold his gaze for a couple seconds more before she had to look away, grief pooling hot at the back of her throat. It felt like her fault, like she hadn't done enough to save him. Like if she'd worked harder, moved faster, been smarter, she could have prevented it. Logically, she knew that was stupid, that she hadn't been anywhere near him and the only people responsible were Daud and whoever put the Twin-Bladed Knife in his hands, but logic couldn't take away the feeling that she'd failed, and he was paying the price. Again.

She realized that she was rubbing her arm again, fretfully digging her thumb into the joint where it always ached when she first woke up. When she looked up Attano was watching her, his face unreadable. She curled her hand into a fist.

"How do you _know_?" She was surprised by the sound of her voice, raw and aching like there was a stone lodged in her throat. She didn't let it stop her from demanding, "How could you _possibly_ know any of this?" 

Attano didn't answer, just looked up at the stars. Billie considered the possibility that she really might have to shake the answers out of him this time, and was grimly considering the likelihood that she'd lose a hand for real if she tried, when he abruptly sat up, drained the last of his vodka, and poured another glass.

"A few weeks ago, a terrorist targeting Emily blew up the Dunwall Clocktower."

"I… what?" Billie blinked, whiplashed by what seemed like an abrupt change of subject. "What does that have to do with-"

"We were there when it blew," Attano said, ignoring her. "Emily and me. Knew it was a trap, but had to check it out anyway. Didn't figure it out fast enough."

Billie's breath caught in her throat. Emily. Emily was supposed to be _safe,_ up in her Tower. It was supposed to be done. "Was she-"

"She got out," Attano told her. She released her held breath in a sigh. "I didn't. Too slow, too careless. Still act like I'm invincible. Fucking stupid." He pulled at his lower lip, heavy brows drawn together in a frown, before he shook it away. "Anyway. There I am, out for days, while Em's running around handling the whole thing herself. Like an empress doesn't have better things to do than clean up my mess."

Billie's chest ached. Void, poor Emily. If Billie had been there- Well, she couldn't have saved Daud if she had, could she? She'd had to choose, and Emily had made it clear she didn't want Billie's help. Which wasn't the same as not needing it. _Fuck._

"She did it right, though," Attano assured her, as if she'd ever think otherwise. "Finished the investigation on her own, tracked the terrorist down and brought her in alive. _Justice_ , Em says. Should've killed her, I said. Sent a message." He stared into the depths of his glass like it held all the secrets of the universe. "She asked me how that had worked out for me."

"Attano…"

He flinched away from the sympathy in her voice, a look on his face like he hadn't meant to say the last. "That's not the point, anyway. The point is, I was laid up for a while. Took me a bit before Em would let me back into my office. And when I do, I catch someone putting a letter on my desk."

Billie went still, her pulse drumming hotly in her ears.

"Didn't get a chance to ask her any questions. She went out the window before I could say anything, disappeared like-" He tipped his head ruefully. "-magic, but that's not the weird thing. The weird thing is, I track you down here in Serkonos looking for answers, and realize that you don't _have_ a black stone where your right eye should be, or a hand like blackened bone. And you don't seem to know a single damn thing about what you put in that letter."

She stared at him for a full three heartbeats, too stunned to speak. "My… what? I didn't-" _Your eye_ , Daud had said. _How'd you get it back?_ "No. That doesn't- Just _no._ "

Attano shrugged, a small acknowledging movement that filled her with rage. "And it never occurred to you that you might be _mistaken?_ " she demanded. "You've been in Gristol too long, Lord Protector. Not all fucking black women look alike."

"No," he agreed, far too calmly for her peace of mind. "But Emily was with me, too, and I don't think you can argue that she wouldn't remember your face."

No. No, she couldn't argue that at all. "But that doesn't-" She groped helplessly for an explanation, something nameless and terrifying churning sick-cold under her breastbone. "Someone could have been using a mask, or a spell to look like me, or-"

"Maybe." His gruff voice was oddly gentle. "But witnesses in the Aventa district confirm that there was someone else with Daud, someone matching your description but with the same features: stone eye, bone hand. The handwriting in the letter matches the journal in your cabin, correcting for prosthetic drift - I assume you write right-handed?" She nodded dumbly. "If that isn't enough for you, I can also tell you that she was wearing the same red dueling coat you have on now - and her prosthetic ended in the exact same spot you keep rubbing when you aren't paying attention."

She was doing it right now, in point of fact; she dropped her hand away as if jolted. Attano watched, but didn't comment. After a moment his shoulders heaved in a sigh.

"I don't know what to tell you, Captain. I'm aware it makes no sense. But just because something is impossible doesn't mean it can't be done. You of all people should know that."

Yes, she should. She did. Whether it was Daud's sorcery or Jessamine's murder or her own survival, she'd seen so many impossible things that the word had lost almost all meaning. But if what he said was true-

A shudder wracked her, starting at the crown of her head and working all the way down to her toes. She wrapped her arm around herself, cradling it to her middle and not caring what a tell it was. "I don't… understand this," she whispered. "I don't understand any of it."

"That makes two of us," he told her, not without sympathy, and politely returned his attention to the stars so she could break down with the illusion of privacy.

It didn't take long; in a lifetime of weird and miserable things this didn't quite manage to top the list. That honor was reserved for the first time she saw Daud use magic and Deirdre's body slumped lifeless in the street, respectively. This was just- Something new. Something _really_ new.

(Time travel didn't exist. Did it? And if it did, did that mean she was destined to lose her arm and her eye? Or was this Billie from another world, one where it had already happened, just like in her dreams?)

"Anyway," Attano said, after a respectable amount of time had passed. Billie almost wanted to smile; how _did_ one determine how long to give someone to process life-altering information? Maybe he just got impatient. "You asked how I know about Daud; that's how. It was in the letter. I don't know why she gave it to _me,_ but that's why I'm here. It's a mystery." He shook his head and knocked back the rest of his vodka, reaching for the rapidly dwindling bottle with his other hand. "I can't abide mysteries."

No, she imagined he couldn't. When you made your living from other people's secrets there was nothing so dangerous as one you couldn't explain; Billie knew _that_ better than most. But there was something about his tone and his short, jerky movements that snagged at her attention, something beyond the words themselves.

She slanted him a cautious look. "That sounds like you're planning to stick around for a while."

_Bullseye_. Attano went still, the bottle in his hand tipped halfway through a pour, and raised an eyebrow. "Is that a problem, Captain?"

It was amazing the different inflections he could bring to bear on that single word, even on such short acquaintance. Sometimes he'd said _Captain_ like a taunt, to remind her he knew who she really was. Sometimes it was respectful, the automatic courtesy of a man who'd lived at court his entire adult life. Sometimes it sounded like _you're too stupid to draw breath._ And just now it had sounded like _it had better_ not _be a problem._ The Lord Regent at work.

Billie smiled into her glass. "Actually, I was just gonna say that I've got a bunk going spare if you need it."

It was nice to see him surprised. She'd seen a lot of emotion from him tonight - well, a lot for a man so habitually closed-off - but surprise wasn't one of them. Probably not a lot of people surprised Attano these days. It was nice to be one of them, after the way he'd been holding all of the cards.

It didn't last long, though. "You don't think Daud might have a problem with that?" he needled. "I am here to stop him, if you'll recall. He's cut down everyone else that got in his way."

Oh, _that_ was a bitter thought: all of Daud's unstoppable force of obsession crashing into Attano's legendary immovable stubbornness. But no, she wasn't going to let herself get distracted. Attano wasn't going to play her _that_ easily. It had taken a long night and the best part of a bottle of vodka, but she had the measure of him now.

"I think you're just about the last person in the world Daud would ever lift a hand to," Billie told him. "And I think you don't need me to tell you that, either. You didn't drag me into this because you needed me as a buffer, or because you needed my _help_ rescuing one broken old man. You brought me in because something strange is going on and for whatever reason I'm at the center of it, and you want to know why."

Attano said nothing, but his sideways look was cautious now, almost wary. Billie was surprised to find herself smiling. "I don't blame you, Attano. I would've done the same thing. I'm just saying, it'll probably be easier to keep an eye on me if we're actually in the same place."

Attano finally unstuck himself, splashing vodka into the glass and leaning forward to put the bottle back on the table with a nonchalance that didn't quite manage to come off as natural. "So?"

"So, the bunk's yours if you want it." _It suited Emily well enough,_ she could've said, but he didn't need reminding what she had - and hadn't - done for his daughter. "I won't even charge you rent."

"Generous of you." Any drier, and you could hear tumbleweeds in his voice. None of the sarcasm showed on his face, though; his head was cocked to the side, his dark eyes intent on her face. "You sure about this, Captain?"

Not really, no. Her survival instincts were screaming that this was a _terrible_ idea, actually, that confining Attano and his cryptic bullshit in with Daud and his unholy crusade was a disaster in the making. But another part of her - the part that had flipped her blade to Daud that night in the Flooded District all those years ago, the part that had forced her to be honest with Emily when she could have sailed off into the sunset basking in the glow of her false regard - knew, somehow, that this was the only play that would work. For Daud and whatever obsession was driving him, for Attano and his impossible mystery, and maybe even for herself. If she'd learned anything over the years, it was that sometimes, the unexpected grace of surrender was the most powerful of all.

"'course I am," she said easily. "Just one thing, though."

"Mhm?"

"If you break into my cabin again, I'm gonna break your fingers."

"You can _try,_ " he retorted, immediate and childish, and Billie couldn't do anything but laugh, tipping her chair back to look up at the stars. Void only knew what she was getting herself into this time, but whatever else happened, they'd at least made a pretty good team tonight. There were worse people than Corvo fucking Attano to have by your side when sailing into the unknown.

"You know, if I get you killed with this, Emily will never forgive me," she said, after a moment.

It was a tacit admission that maybe he was right and forgiveness was something that was still on the table, and from the way he laughed - not just smiled but actually _laughed,_ a hoarse bark of noise that brought an answering smile to her face - and raised his glass, he heard it fine well.

"To not dying then," said Attano - no, said _Corvo,_ his eyes still creased up at the corners with a smile that made Billie understand how he'd once captured the heart of an empress. "And to never getting what we deserve."

"I'll drink to that," she said, and did.

Tomorrow she'd have to figure out what Daud was up to, what he knew, how she fit into the middle. But for tonight she had him safe in her home and half a bottle left, with an unexpected ally to share it with. All things considered, it had actually been a pretty good night.

###### 

(The next morning, when the Outsider came for her, she honestly wasn't even surprised.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The terrorist attack and Corvo getting all blowed up is canon from _The Peeress and the Price_ , while time-travelling Billie Lurk and Daud's death being caused by contact with the Twin-Bladed Knife is canon from _Return of Daud._ If you haven't read the book, the important part is that Billie, some years in the future, travels back to before Daud gets taken captive by the Eyeless to try and save him... and instead ends up putting the Knife in his hands herself, not knowing it was the cause of his death. (Ouch!) So she goes back over and over again (sort of like replaying a level to get an achievement, the author thought he was very clever) but eventually accepts that she'd closed the loop and sealed his fate, and there's nothing more she could do. But what if she didn't stop there? What if, with the advantage of time and distance, she tried to come at the problem from a different direction? After all, Corvo Attano had done the impossible before. Maybe he could do it again.
> 
> Honestly, I just really love the mirroring/connections that Dishonored makes use of in their world, and while Daud and Corvo are presented as narrative foils the actual chain of mercy that makes up the backbone of the narrative goes from Corvo to Billie. And yet they never actually directly interacted in canon. Which I thought was a shame, especially given the man that Corvo grew into by the time of DH2.
> 
> As a final note, one of my favorite moments to compare Emily's path in DH2 to Corvo's is the final conversation with Billie. Emily doesn't understand what Billie is telling her until she spells it out, while Corvo recognizes her name and what it means, and just wants to hear her say it. When she says she'll never get over it, he says "No, I don't think you will" instead of Emily's "I hope not". His delivery of his farewell is also genuinely gracious, lacking Emily's lingering bitterness. It's such a small thing in the scheme of things, but it's the difference between a young woman who feels freshly betrayed by a friend she's come to trust, and a middle-aged man who's lived long enough to accumulate some profound regrets of his own. And it's exactly the reason that I found myself wanting to write about these two off being quietly competent while everyone else was having dramatics around them.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [sorrelchestnut](https://sorrelchestnut.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, come say hi!


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